Friday, December 19th, shortly after lunch...I started having severe chest pain, radiating down my left arm, and up into my jaw. I had been dealing with this for several months, and had been to my cardiologist about a month previous for a stress test, which came back normal. My personal physician had prescribed Nitroglycerin, and I had found that it broke the "attack" in a matter of seconds. It just seemed the attacks were coming more and more frequently, and took longer to break. I went to…Continue

my fire /ems/ rescue co was dispatched to a man who was lost back in the woods and had just enough life
left on his cell phone to call 911. they were able to give us the general area where e was suppose to be.
so we get all our gear we firgured we would need to go looking for him in the dark. as we hit the area one thing we notice is that its very muddy. even our 4 wheelers arnt gettin back any further. on foot we go. my chief heres him calling and go rushing up ahead of us he has a… Continue

Hello everyone, I’m the new guy. I work for a company some of you may have heard of Nichols Trailers in Wilton Maine. We make a bunch of different trailer but our rescue trailer is really what I think is the most important trailer we build. With the ever growing popularity of ATV/UTV riding and the amount of trails open for riders it’s a wonder that there are not more accidents than there are currently. As you may know, Maine is a big ol’ wood lot and there are literally 100’s of miles of… Continue

Though it may be indelicate and thoroughly unpoetic to say so, in many ways, working for a transport squad blew.

The lack of respect garnered from the emergency guys was palpable-- they despised us, they thought we were the bottom of the heap-- the rotten apple cores and fish heads that stunk up the red biohazard trashcan of EMS like no other stench.

(And some of them even pulled part-time or per diem hours for us! I guess we were good enough to pad their… Continue

Our siren sounded like a Bassett Hound being raped with a frozen carrot.

“BOI-WEEEEEEE-WEEEEE-OOH-OOH-WHOA-WHOA-WHOA!!!”

It struggled to reach that higher octave that would have almost made it sound normal but, being broken for some time, it couldn’t quite get there. Normally, in a normal ambulance, when you run lights-and-sirens, pedestrians on the sidewalk jump out in front of you, making a suicidal dash to get to the other side of the street, threatening to become your… Continue

On the Way Down is a personal essay of mine that originally appeared in the online literary journal "Backhand Stories" in April. Enjoy.

Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong. My paternal grandmother’s name was Nava, which, in Hebrew, translates to “beautiful.” In the biblical Song of Songs, it says, “Thou art beautiful [nava], O my love, as Tirzah, beautiful [nava] as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.” By the time I met my Nava, she wasn’t quite… Continue

Every once and a while this thought creeps into my head because I have witnessed it first hand....

A little background before I begin though! I live in a pretty densely populated area of New Jersey (Bergen County), most of the population is advanced in years. For the most part, all of us are volunteer EMT's with other jobs. We have dispatchers that are "ALS happy" by which I mean they will dispatch an ALS unit for a hangnail.

When I was a wee bit lad of 11 or so, I started tuning in to what was exceptionally poor reception on Channel 24 in Baltimore. There was this awesome show called Emergency! It was all about firefighters and paramedics. Basically, it rocked (for an 11-year-old). I can't even remember what other TV Shows I watched around that time, probably the cool hip shows of the era like the A-Team and… Continue

Here's a word of warning to everybody out there who likes engaging in risky behavior:

If you like to drag-race your friends at night in souped-up Hondas, if you like parachuting out of planes or getting chased by raging bulls or operating heavy machinery after taking Sudafed: watch out. The medical helicopter that comes to pick your broken ass up doesn't have a great chance of making it to the trauma center with everyone alive.

As a Pennsylvania-certified EMT living in peaceful semi-retirement from that particular world, my interest is always piqued when I see a news story that concerns members of the emergency medical services. Usually it's a story about their valorous service or the efficiency and aplomb with which they handle a devastating tragedy.

This time, however, it's about some sorry morons who will be shortly losing their jobs.

On March 16, 1985, a volunteer EMS provider named Sigmund Fine wrote an editorial to the Philadelphia Daily News in which he expressed distress over the poor state of EMS in the city of Philadelphia.

"The problem is very serious because lives are at stake," Mr. Fine wrote. Over two decades later, we find that he was not an alarmist. He was right, and we now have the names and the stories to prove it.

On Jan. 1, 2008, Deborah Payne waited over an hour for a Philadelphia… Continue

Let me just say that I couldn't agree more with the sentiment that all too often a private ambulance service is on-scene at a medical or trauma incident prior to Philadelphia Fire EMS. This proves my point that the Philadelphia Fire Department's emergency medical resources are inadequate to cope with the burdens and demands placed upon it by the citizenship who a.) do not know when it is appropriate to call 911 and/or b.) do not care when it is appropriate to call 911. Many cities have long… Continue

IT'S A DISTURBING and frightening fact that the Philadelphia Fire Department believes its 40 ambulances are perpetually prepared to handle every medical and trauma emergency call that comes in, especially when many people tie up the ambulances with bogus calls that essentially amount to a taxi ride. This total reliance on the fire department can't work and can't last.

As an EMT, I worked for a for-profit ambulance company in the city, and its… Continue